TL;DR
Steam Update Visibility Rounds are Valve's post-launch promotional slots: each game gets five lifetime rounds, and each round runs 30 days or 1 million impressions, whichever comes first.
Scope
Plain-language definitions of the vocabulary around Steam Update Visibility Rounds, the post-launch promotional slots Valve grants for announcing a major update, plus the rules that govern how many you get and how long each one runs.
A to Z
- Attribution
- Connecting an outcome (a wishlist, a purchase) back to the specific channel that caused it. A visibility round is not an attribution tool: it reports what Steam's own promotion generated, not which of your campaigns drove anything. See marketing attribution for Steam games for the full picture of what can and cannot be measured.
- Impressions cap
- The ceiling on how many times Steam will show your round: 1 million impressions on the Steam homepage. A round ends at that cap or at 30 days, whichever it hits first.
- Launch visibility
- The promotional push Steam gives every game automatically around its release. Update Visibility Rounds only become available once this initial launch visibility has concluded; you cannot run one before or during launch.
- Major update
- The kind of release Steam intends these rounds for: substantial new content, a DLC release, or a new feature. A balance patch or bug-fix build is not the intended use.
- Update Visibility Round
- A promotional slot Steam grants your game for announcing a major update. While a round is active, Steam shows the update to players who own or have wishlisted the game, including dedicated space on the store's front page.
- UTM analytics
- Steam's link-tracking system, and the closest thing Steam offers to channel attribution. It attributes a wishlist or purchase to a tagged link only if the conversion happens within 72 hours of the click, so a player who clicks your link on Monday and wishlists on Friday is never counted.
Round mechanics: 5 lifetime rounds, 30 days or 1M impressions each
Steam's own developer documentation sets out the mechanics:
| Mechanic | Rule |
|---|---|
| Rounds per game | 5, for the game's lifetime (not per year) |
| Extra rounds | Steam may grant more based on sales performance |
| Round length | Up to 30 days, or 1M homepage impressions, whichever comes first |
| Eligibility | Post-launch only, after initial launch visibility has concluded |
| Early Access | The 5 rounds are shared across Early Access and full release |
| Seasonal sales | The round's placement pauses, but the 30-day clock keeps running |
Two of these rules catch studios out. The pool is shared across Early Access and full release, so a game that spends all five rounds in Early Access has none left for post-1.0 updates.
The seasonal-sale rule bites the same way: because the 30-day clock keeps running through a sale, starting a round the week before a Steam sale burns days while the placement is paused.
What studios most often confuse: a visibility round is not attribution
The most common mistake is treating Update Visibility Rounds as an attribution tool. They are promotional: Steam shows your update to owners and wishlisters, then reports the impressions and clicks it generated. That tells you what Steam's promotion lifted, not which of your own marketing channels drove anything.
Rounds are also not a continuous system. Three things are easy to conflate here, and each answers a different question:
- Steam's Traffic Report runs all the time, and reports where store-page visits came from.
- Steam's UTM analytics track link clicks all the time, and attribute conversions only within 72 hours of a click.
- An Update Visibility Round is a one-off event spent from a pool of five, and reports only what Steam's own promotion generated.
The UTM system undercounts for structural reasons, covered in why Steam UTM tracking undercounts your marketing. For the full picture of what can and cannot be measured, see the guide to marketing attribution for Steam games.
Measuring the lift per round is where the two ideas meet. With only five rounds, each one deserves a before-and-after read: wishlist adds, sales, and traffic in the round's window against the weeks either side, split by channel so Steam's promotion is not credited to your own campaigns.
Attribution connects ad spend, Steam link-tracking data, and wishlist/conversion numbers by channel, so a weekly check shows which channel is actually working rather than one blended number that hides it.
Sources: Steamworks developer documentation on Update Visibility Rounds, store visibility, and UTM analytics (partner.steamgames.com), 2026.
